Letter to the Editor: In defense of Rosen

I write to provide important context to the events reported on Feb. 7 in the Daily Princetonian story “Students walk out of anthropology lecture after professor uses the word “n****r.” Like every semester, professor Lawrence Rosen started the class by breaking a number of taboos in order to get the students to recognize their emotional response to cultural symbols. Rosen was fighting battles for women, Native Americans, and African-Americans before these students were born.